VA VOCATIONAL 

REHABILITATION AND 

EMPLOYMENT

Further Program 

Management 

Improvements Are Needed

Statement of Daniel Bertoni, Director

Education, Workforce and Income Security

Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on Economic 

Opportunity, Committee on Veterans’ 

Affairs, House of Representatives

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 10:00 a.m. EST

Thursday, February 27, 2014

GAO-14-363T

United States Government Accountability Office
 

Page 1 GAO-14-363T 

Chairman Flores, Ranking Member Takano, and Members of the 

Subcommittee:

I am pleased to discuss our work on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 

(VA) Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) program. The 

VR&E program helps veterans with service-connected disabilities1 obtain 

and maintain suitable employment, which VA defines as employment 

consistent with veterans’ abilities and interests. Eligible veterans may 

receive services such as vocational assessment, education, training, and 

job placement.2 In fiscal year 2012, about 121,000 veterans participated 

in the program at a cost of almost $1 billion. The program is administered 

by VA staff located in the agency’s 57 regional offices or additional 

satellite locations. In 2009, we reported on a number of challenges VA 

faced managing this program. More recently, the VOW to Hire Heroes Act 

of 2011 (VOW Act) mandated that GAO review the VR&E program.3 My 

remarks today are based on the report issued January 14, 2014, which 

examined: (1) the outcomes for veterans seeking employment through 

the VR&E program, and (2) the progress VA has made in addressing 

critical management issues.4

To inform our work, we reviewed relevant federal laws, regulations, 

guidance, and documentation related to recent management initiatives; 

analyzed VA administrative data on VR&E participants who applied to the 

program between fiscal years 2003 and 2012;5

 

1 To qualify for VR&E services, veterans generally must have a service-connected 

disability rated at 20 percent or higher and an employment handicap resulting in 

substantial part from the service-connected disability, and typically must receive the 

services within either 12 years of either discharge from the military or receipt of a VA 

disability rating. Veterans with a 10 percent disability rating may also be eligible if they 

have a serious employment handicap. 38 U.S.C. §§ 3102 and 3103. 

and interviewed central 

2 Eligible veterans for whom a vocational goal is not currently considered reasonably 

feasible may receive assistance intended to help them achieve independent living.

Independent living benefits can include counseling, assistive device, and other services or 

equipment.38 U.S.C. § 3109.

3

 Pub. L. No. 112-56, § 233(d), 125 Stat. 711, 720. 

4 See GAO, VA Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment: Further Performance and 

Workload Management Improvements Are Needed, GAO-14-61 (Washington, D.C.: 

January 14, 2014).

5 We assessed the reliability of these data through electronic testing and interviews with 

VA staff, and found them sufficiently reliable for our reporting purposes.
 

Page 2 GAO-14-363T 

and regional office staff responsible for administering the VR&E program 

and providing services.6

With respect to program outcomes, we found that of almost 17,000 

veterans who entered the VR&E program in fiscal year 2003—the earliest 

year for which reliable data are available—and received employmentrelated services, just under half had achieved rehabilitation (that is, 

suitable employment) by the end of fiscal year 2012. Another 30 percent 

had discontinued their participation in the program, although some of 

these were considered by VA to have obtained some benefits from 

program participation even though they did not achieve suitable 

employment.

We also interviewed a nongeneralizable sample 

of 17 veterans who had participated in the VR&E program, and reviewed 

methods and results associated with VA’s pilot satisfaction survey of 

VR&E participants. We conducted this work from October 2012 to 

January 2014 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to 

obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for 

our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 

that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings 

and conclusions based on our audit objectives. A more detailed 

explanation of our methodology is available in our report.

7

 

6 We interviewed VR&E managers and staff in 8 VA regional offices, selected to achieve 

diversity in VR&E caseload, performance in job placement and case processing 

timeliness, state unemployment rate, and geographic location.

Most of the rest were still receiving program services. (See 

fig. 1.)

7 VA classifies some veterans who discontinue from the VR&E program as having 

achieved maximum rehabilitation gain (MRG), meaning they attained vocational skills or 

some other benefit from program participation even though they did not achieve suitable 

employment.
 

Page 3 GAO-14-363T 

Figure 1: Outcomes to Date for Fiscal Year 2003 Applicants Who Received 

Employment-Related Services

Note: The percentages in the four outcome categories do not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. 

It is possible that some veterans who discontinued in fiscal year 2010 or later are included as MRG 

cases in this figure even though they actually discontinued for a different reason. This is because of a 

change in fiscal year 2010 in the meaning assigned to certain discontinuation reason codes in VA 

data.

We also found that while the average time to achieve employment was 

about 4 1⁄2 years, time frames varied significantly. About half the veterans 

achieved success within 3 to 6 years, but many took considerably longer 

(see fig. 2). One reason for lengthy time frames is that some ultimately 

successful participants discontinued or interrupted8

 

8 According to VA, VR&E uses the interrupted status as a tool to allow veterans time to 

resolve unexpected issues without using up time-limited employment services.

their programs along 

the way. Of those who achieved employment, about one-quarter 

interrupted their programs at least once, and about the same proportion 

discontinued, then returned to the program (some more than once) before 

ultimately achieving success.
 

Page 4 GAO-14-363T 

Figure 2: Time to Achieve Suitable Employment for Fiscal Year 2003 Applicants

Note: Percentages of veterans placed in each year do not add up to 100 due to rounding.

a

Indicates the percentage of successfully rehabilitated fiscal year 2003 applicants placed in suitable 

employment in each year following application.

b

We identified several common challenges that VR&E participants face to 

successfully completing their programs and achieving rehabilitation. 

Specifically:

Indicates the cumulative percentage of successfully rehabilitated fiscal year 2003 applicants placed 

in suitable employment by each year following application.

• Our analysis of VA data indicates that VR&E participants with mental 

health conditions were 12 percentage points less likely to achieve 

suitable employment within 8 years of program entry compared to 
 

Page 5 GAO-14-363T 

participants without such conditions, the largest difference for any 

type of disability.9

• Our interviews with VA staff and veterans indicate that VR&E 

participants face challenges with developing employment plans that 

can realistically lead to success. For example, VA staff in one office 

said that veterans with mental health conditions may want to pursue 

an unrealistic career in law enforcement. Veterans we interviewed 

also cited challenges in reaching agreement with VR&E staff on an 

employment plan. Our analysis of VA data indicates that program 

participants often stop their program then return to receive additional

evaluation services.

• Our analysis of VA data indicates that VR&E participants who work 

with more VR&E staff over time are less likely to achieve suitable 

employment. For example, veterans who worked with four staff were 

27 percentage points less likely to achieve success within 8 years of 

program entry, compared to those who worked with only one staff 

member.10

• Our analysis of VA’s satisfaction survey results indicates that many 

veterans who discontinued or interrupted their employment programs 

cited “family obligations” (27 percent) or “financial difficulties” (18 

 

9 We chose a period of 8 years for this analysis because many veterans take that long to 

achieve a successful outcome. This period of analysis provided enough time to observe 

successful outcomes and included results for veterans who applied in both fiscal years 

2003 and 2004. We also analyzed the associations between specific disabilities and the 

likelihood and rate of achieving program success at various points in time after 

application, while controlling for other factors that may affect outcomes. Even after 

controlling for these factors, we still found that having a mental health condition was 

associated with a smaller chance of success.

10 We analyzed the association between multiple staff and the likelihood and rate of 

achieving program success at various points in time following application, while controlling 

for other factors that may affect outcomes. Among other things we controlled for the 

number of times veterans discontinued from and re-entered the VR&E program, which 

could be associated with the number of staff they worked with. Even after controlling for 

these factors, we still found that working with multiple staff was associated with a smaller 

chance of success.
 

Page 6 GAO-14-363T 

percent) as a reason.11

• Managers, staff, and veterans we interviewed cited challenges with 

the transition from military to civilian employment. For example, 

managers or staff told us veterans may have difficulty translating 

military experience into terms that civilian employers can understand, 

or that they may need civilian credentials to get a job even with the 

expertise they gained in the military.

VR&E managers and staff also noted such 

challenges; for example, managers in one office said veterans may 

quit training or take a job not suitable for their disability because they 

need to support their families.

Once veterans achieve suitable employment, few return for additional 

services.12 Specifically, we found that, of those who were rehabilitated,

only 4 percent applied for and 2 percent ultimately returned to VR&E to 

receive additional employment-related services. Further, at the time of our 

review, only a small number of rehabilitated veterans returned to receive 

additional services under the expanded eligibility criteria authorized by the 

VOW Act.13

With regard to VA’s progress in addressing critical VR&E management 

issues, we found that weaknesses remain in performance management, 

VR&E managers or staff told us almost all the veterans who 

are eligible for additional services under the expanded criteria already 

qualify under the old criteria, which provide more months of additional 

services. 

 

11 VA’s Voice of the Veteran survey measures veterans’ satisfaction with benefits and 

services received, including through the VR&E program. The results reported here are 

from the pilot survey fielded from October 2012 to January 2013. The results on reasons 

for withdrawing or interrupting from the program are based on the responses of almost 

200 veterans who had withdrawn or interrupted after spending at least 60 days in the 

program. We assessed the methodology of the pilot survey and concluded that the results 

we are reporting are sufficiently reliable for our purposes. However, these results reflect 

the opinions of survey respondents and cannot be generalized to the broader population 

of VR&E participants. 

12 Under certain circumstances, veterans who have achieved suitable employment may 

return for additional VR&E services, such as if their disabilities have worsened to the 

extent they can no longer perform the occupation for which they were rehabilitated. The 

VOW Act expanded these eligibility criteria to include certain veterans who have 

exhausted their state unemployment compensation benefits. Pub. L. No. 112-56, § 

233(a)(1), 125 Stat. 711, 719, (codified at 38 U.S.C. § 3102(b)).

13 According to VA, between May 2012 and April 2013 10 veterans nationwide received

additional services under the new VOW Act criteria.
 

Page 7 GAO-14-363T 

workload management, and staff training, although the agency has made 

efforts to improve each of these areas.

VA has an initiative underway to improve its primary measure of program 

performance, but the alternative measure under consideration falls short 

of good practices. VA’s primary measure of performance is its 

rehabilitation rate, which is the number of successful rehabilitations 

divided by the total number of successful rehabilitations and unsuccessful 

case closures. VA central and regional office staff cited problems with the 

current VR&E rehabilitation rate measure, including that it encourages 

VR&E staff to delay or avoid closing their cases unsuccessfully because 

this counts against their rehabilitation rate performance measure. To 

address these and other issues, VA is revising its individual, regional, and 

program-wide performance measures and plans to move from a 

rehabilitation rate measure for assessing individual staff performance to a 

measure of the number of positive outcomes, including rehabilitations. 

While this approach may be appropriate for assessing individual 

performance, as a measure of program performance, it lacks 

transparency because it does not reflect the extent to which veterans are 

discontinued from the program without rehabilitation. Further, this 

measure does not distinguish between rehabilitations and other benefits 

attained from participation—such as when the veteran gains some 

vocational skills from participation but does not obtain and maintain 

suitable employment. To provide a fuller picture of program success, we 

recommended that VA include in any revised set of national and regional 

measures (1) a measure of the proportion of participants successfully 

rehabilitated to employment, and (2) a measure of the proportion of 

participants who attained other benefits from participation. VA concurred 

with this recommendation and noted that rate-based measures will be 

included in its revised set of national VR&E performance measures.

In addition, VA lacks and does not intend to develop performance 

measures related to veterans’ long-term employment outcomes, even 

though it is planning to collect information that could serve as a basis for 

such measures. Part of VR&E’s mission is to help veterans maintain 

employment, and to address this, VA counts a job placement as a 

successful rehabilitation if it is maintained for at least 60 days.14

 

14 VR&E staff have discretion to track employment for a longer period if necessary, but we 

found that in the majority of successful rehabilitations since fiscal year 2003 (almost twothirds), employment was tracked for less than 6 months before case closure.

However, 
 

Page 8 GAO-14-363T 

research and practices at other federal employment programs suggest 

that tracking employment for 60 days may not be sufficient to gauge 

whether a veteran will maintain a job for the long term. For example,

Department of Labor employment and training programs measure job 

retention over 180 days. 

VA is considering contacting rehabilitated and discontinued VR&E 

participants at 6 and 12 months after they finish the program to identify 

veterans who are having difficulties in maintaining employment, and 

possibly provide them additional supports. However, VA does not plan to 

use this information to develop a performance measure of longer-term 

employment outcomes, and thus may miss an opportunity to hold staff 

accountable for and make program adjustments to improve such 

outcomes. We recommended that VA develop new measures of longterm employment success that go beyond the current 60-day minimum, 

possibly drawing on its planned post-exit surveys. VA concurred with this 

recommendation in principle. However, it noted that because VA staff 

typically work with VR&E participants for years while in the program and 

potentially for up to 18 months following training completion, it sees no 

value in devoting limited resources to additional post-placement 

monitoring. We continue to believe that VA needs to hold itself 

accountable for the longer-term employment success of all participants, 

and that this could be done in a cost-effective way.

Lastly, with respect to performance management, although VA has 

generally followed recognized practices in designing its customer 

satisfaction survey, the reliability of pilot results is uncertain. Specifically, 

we found the agency has generally followed recognized survey practices 

including detailed survey planning, comprehensive questionnaire 

development and testing, and extensive data collection activities. 

However, VA did not perform a nonresponse bias analysis of the pilot 

survey results, even though response rates for the pilot surveys were 

below 30 percent. Guidance issued by the Office of Management and 

Budget calls for nonresponse analysis when a survey’s unit response rate 
 

Page 9 GAO-14-363T 

is below 80 percent.15

With regard to workload management, problems with VA’s formula for 

allocating staff among regional offices may be contributing to some 

offices’ ongoing workload challenges. VA has taken steps to address 

workload management issues, such as reducing paperwork requirements. 

However, some offices we contacted still have concerns about high 

workloads, and the ratio of VR&E cases to staff varies considerably 

among the regions. In March 2013, for example, seven offices averaged 

fewer than 100 cases per staff member, while eight averaged over 175. 

VA’s formula for allocating staff among the offices—which has not been 

significantly revised since fiscal year 2003—is based on offices’ 

workloads and their performance on several metrics. Regional managers 

in five of the eight offices we contacted raised concerns about the 

formula, indicating that it may not effectively assign staff where they are 

most needed. For example, one concern is that the formula does not take 

into account educational and vocational counseling cases, which 

according to VA data may be disproportionately concentrated in certain 

offices. Another concern is that by assigning more staff to higherperforming offices, the formula may make it difficult for lower-performing 

offices to improve. To the extent the formula does not align staffing 

resources where needed, it may reduce some offices’ ability to effectively 

serve veterans. We recommended that in revisiting its allocation formula, 

VA should consider these two issues and make adjustments as needed. 

VA concurred with this recommendation and said it plans to revisit its 

formula.

Since VA plans to use survey results to inform 

program improvements and training developments, to ensure that this 

survey effort yields reliable data to drive program improvements, we 

recommended that—as warranted by response rates—VA conduct 

nonresponse analysis of its ongoing customer satisfaction survey results. 

VA concurred with this recommendation and noted that if funding permits, 

it will modify its survey administration contract to include such an 

analysis.

 

15 Nonresponse occurs when members of the sample do not participate in the survey at all 

(unit nonresponse), or do not answer particular questions (item nonresponse). 

Nonresponse may result in nonresponse bias—systematic errors that result in under- or 

overestimation of a true value in survey results—because nonrespondents may have 

provided substantially different answers than those who did respond. A nonresponse 

analysis is an established survey research practice used to determine whether 

nonresponse bias has occurred. It can be performed using a variety of methods.
 

Page 10 GAO-14-363T 

VA also lacks information about regional offices’ varied approaches to 

managing their caseloads. VA’s administration of the VR&E program is 

decentralized, and according to VA central office officials each office’s 

management has discretion about how to manage their caseloads and 

assign cases among staff. Some offices, for example, have veterans work 

with one staff member throughout their participation in the program, citing 

as an advantage the rapport that develops between veteran and staff 

member. Others have their staff specialize in particular phases of the 

rehabilitation process, such as evaluation or case management. Although 

veterans work with different staff members, some managers and staff 

said this approach leads to efficiencies. VA’s central office, however, has 

not collected information on or assessed the effectiveness of the regional 

offices’ varied approaches. Further examination of these approaches is 

especially important given our finding that veterans who work with more 

VR&E staff over time are less likely to achieve suitable employment. We 

recommended that VA collect information on the regional offices’ 

approaches for managing their VR&E workloads, assess their advantages 

and disadvantages, and use the results of this assessment to provide 

guidance to the offices. VA concurred with this recommendation and 

noted steps it plans to take to address it.

In the area of staff training, some gaps remain in its curriculum for VR&E 

staff, although VA has taken steps to improve training. In recent years, 

VA added new courses for VR&E staff, which has reduced redundancy in 

training from year to year and closed a number of gaps identified in a 

2010 skill gap analysis. However, based on our review of the VR&E 

training curriculum and comments from regional office managers and 

staff, we found that VA does not provide sufficient training on strategies 

for helping veterans with job placement and workplace accommodations, 

which are key to ensuring veterans with disabilities successfully obtain 

and maintain employment. In particular, such training is not part of the 

curriculum for VR&E staff whose main functions are assessment and 

case management but who may also assist participants with job 

placement. We recommended that VA provide additional training to staff 

on job placement and workplace accommodations. VA concurred with this 

recommendation and said it plans to develop new courses in these areas.

Chairman Flores, Ranking Member Takano, and Members of the 

Subcommittee, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would be happy to 

answer any questions that you or other members of the subcommittee 

may have.
 

Page 11 GAO-14-363T 

For further information regarding this testimony, please contact Daniel 

Bertoni at (202) 512-7215, or at bertonid@gao.gov. Contact points for our 

Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on 

the last page of this statement. Individuals who made key contributions to 

this testimony include Michele Grgich (Assistant Director), Jessica 

Botsford, David Chrisinger, Kirsten B. Lauber, and Lorin Obler.

(131301)
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